Only time will tell.'

32

The black of the night sky was fading to navy in the east when Nick let himself out of Annie's apartment. He didn't want anyone finding him here come first light. Which was why he had parked his truck on a secluded boat landing off the levee road a quarter mile away. If word leaked of an association between the defendant and the key witness in the brutality case, there would be hell to pay for both of them.

He didn't wake Annie. He had no desire to wrestle with more questions. She had needed him, he had wanted her-it was as simple and as complex as that.

He didn't want to wonder where it would go from here. He didn't want to wonder why Antoinette, of all women, when he had allowed himself no woman in longer than he could remember. He had spent the last year trying to rebuild himself. There had been nothing left to give beyond what he gave to the job. He wouldn't have said he had anything to give now, when he was backed into yet another corner and in danger of losing not only his career but his identity. And yet, he found himself drawn to this woman. His accuser.

Antoinette, young, fresh, unspoiled. He was none of those things. Was that it? Did he simply want to touch something good and clean? Or was it about redemption or salvation or coercion?

'Aren't you ever confused, Nick? Aren't you ever uncertain?'

'All the time, chere,' he whispered as he drove away.

There was only one Mullen listed in the Bayou Breaux phone book. K. Mullen Jr. lived a block north of the cane mill in a clapboard house built in the fifties and painted once since. Trees kept the lawn as sparse as an adolescent boy's beard. The garage sat back from the house; a bass boat and a Chevy truck were parked on the cracked concrete in front of it.

Nick walked back along the side of the building, peering into windows that hadn't been cleaned in this decade. The space was crammed with junk-old tires, a motorcycle, three lawn mowers, a mud-splattered all-terrain four-wheeler. No Cadillac. At the back of the building, a pair of speckled hunting dogs had worn two crescents of yard to dirt, pacing out to the ends of their chains to crap. The dogs lay tucked into balls between their two small shelters. They didn't crack an eye at Nick.

He went to the back door of the house and let himself in with no resistance from a lock. The kitchen was a depressing little room with dirty dishes on most of the available counter space. Junk mail was stacked up on the small table beside half a loaf of Evangeline Maid white bread, an opened sack of barbeque potato chips, and three empty long-neck bottles of Miller Genuine Draft. Mullen's Sig Sauer lay in its holster on top of the latest Field amp; Stream.

Nick searched through the cupboards and refrigerator, pulling out a cheap frying pan, eggs, butter. As the skillet was heating, he cracked eggs into a bowl, sniffed the milk to check it, then added a splash along with salt and pepper, and whipped it together with a fork. The pan gave a satisfying hiss as the liquid hit the surface.

'Hold it right there!'

Nick glanced over his shoulder. Mullen stood in the doorway in uniform trousers, a shotgun pressed into the hollow of his pasty white shoulder.

'You would hold a gun on me after you've presumed me to be your good friend?' Nick said, scraping a spatula through the bubbling eggs. 'That's bad manners, Deputy.'

'Fourcade?' Mullen lowered the gun and shuffled a little farther into the room, as if he didn't trust his eyes from a distance of five feet. 'What the hell are you doing here?'

'Me, I'm making a little breakfast,' Nick said. 'Your kitchen is a disgrace, Mullen. You know, the kitchen is the soul of the house. How you keep your kitchen is how you keep your life. Looking around here, I'd say you have no respect for yourself.'

Mullen made no comment. He laid the shotgun down on the table and scratched at his thin, greasy hair. 'Wha-?'

'Got any coffee?'

'Why are you in my house? It's six o'clock in the goddamn morning!'

'Well, I figure we're such good friends, you won't mind. Isn't that right, Deputy?' Giving the eggs one last stir, he slid the pan from the burner, and turned around. 'Sorry, I don't have your first name down, but you know I didn't realize we were so close and so I forgot to ever give a shit about it.'

Mullen's expression was an ugly knot of perplexity. He looked like a man straining on the toilet. 'What are you talking about?'

'What'd you do last night'-Nick leaned over the table and scanned the mailing label on an envelope boasting YOUR NEW NRA STICKER ENCLOSED!-'Keith?'

'Why?'

'It's called small talk. This is what buddies do, I'm told. Why you don't tell me all about what you did last night?'

'Went out to the gun club. Why?'

'Shot a few rounds, huh?' Nick said, dousing the eggs with Tabasco from the bottle sitting on the back of the stove. 'What'd you shoot? This handgun you've so carelessly left on your kitchen table?'

'Uh…'

'How about rifles? You shoot some clay?'

'Yeah.'

'You have no clean plates,' Nick announced with disapproval, picking up the frying pan by the handle. He tasted the eggs and forked up a second mouthful. 'You hear about someone taking a shot at Renard last night?'

'Yeah.' The uncertainty was still clear in his small mean eyes, but he had decided to pretend a bit of arrogance. They were compadres… maybe. He crossed his arms over his bare chest. A smirk twisted his lips, revealing crowded bad teeth. 'Too bad he missed, huh?'

'You might assume I would think that, knowing me like you do,' Nick said. 'That wasn't you trying to help justice along there, was it, Keith?'

Mullen forced a laugh. 'Hell no.'

' 'Cause that's against the law, don'tcha know. Now, you might say that didn't stop me the other night. Deputy Broussard stopped me.'

Mullen made a rude sound. 'That little bitch. She oughta mind her own goddamn business.'

'I hear you're trying to help her with that, no? Giving her a hard time and whatnot.'

'She don't know nothing about loyalty, turning on one of us. Cunt's got no business being in a uniform.'

Nick flinched at the obscenity, but held himself. His smile was sharp as he allowed himself to visualize swinging the frying pan like a tennis racket, Mullen's pointy head bouncing off the door frame, blood spraying from his nose and mouth.

'So, you've taken it upon yourself to avenge this wrong she committed against me,' Nick said. 'Because we're such good pals, you and me?'

'She hadn't oughta fuck with the Brotherhood.'

Nick sent the pan sailing across the kitchen like a Frisbee. It landed in the sink with a crash of glass breaking beneath it.

'Hey!' Mullen yelled.

Nick hit him hard in the chest with the heel of his hand, knocking him backward into the cupboards, and held him there, his knuckles digging into the soft hollow just below Mullen's sternum.

'I am not your brother,' he growled, staring into Mullen's eyes. 'The mere suggestion of a genetic tie is an insult to my family. Nor would I count you among my friends. I don't know you from something I would scrape off my shoe. And you've not impressed me here this morning, Keith, I have to say. So I think you'll understand when I tell you I take exception to you acting on my behalf.

'I fight my own battles. I take care of my own problems. I won't tolerate being used as an excuse by some redneck asshole who only wants to bully a woman. You got your own problem with Broussard-that's one thing. You

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